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Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Illuminating The Underworld: Full Moon In Aquarius 2013

Hermes reunites Persephone and Demeter.
Detail from The Return of Persephone,
circa 1891, by Frederic Leighton.

Full Moon @ 28 degrees Aquarius 11’

August 20, 2013

6:45 PM Pacific

3:45 PM Eastern

Aquarius tends to amp things up—it kicks it up a notch.
That’s pretty much the deal with this lunation, since this is the second of two
Full Moons to occur in this sign in 2013. It’s quite a big deal because in
addition to two Full Moons in that Aquarian double current, August’s Full Moon
is anaretic. That’s an astro-geeky reference for a significant placement at the
very end of a zodiac sign, generally 28-29 degrees.

So what’s the big deal with
that? The anarectic degrees of the zodiac are pressurized; anything placed
there gets condensed, and the result is often explosive, literally or
symbolically. I often say that “something is about to explode” whenever an
anaretic degree is prominent. Many significant events throughout history were
unleashed preceding a planet or significant placement occurring at an anaretic
degree. I’m not predicting anything here. I am only pointing out the inherent
nature of this zodiac hot spot.

On an individual level, we’re all likely to feel this in one
way or another--this “building up” of energy, the sense of something giving
way. The floodgates are bursting open alongside a critical culmination of
energy which is inherent for any Full Moon. With Aquarius, and with the 28th
degree, this process becomes more exponential. The Uranian side of Aquarius is
radical, revolutionary, and rather unpredictable.

Combined with the
simultaneous Pluto/Uranus square and Jupiter Square Uranus and Opposition Pluto—we’re
all feeling the overwhelming growing pains that are symptomatic of a restless revolutionary
undercurrent welling up from the collective psyche. Aquarius is fast paced and
it likes to assimilate swiftly. We get the sense of a quickening evolutionary
process, which means that new innovations are emerging within bright and
receptive minds, alongside the illusory experience of time acceleration.

Whether these innovations are used for the improvement of
society or for darker self-serving interests is entirely up to the free will of
the recipient. Any events, intentions, or situations you find coming to a
critical flowering or breaking point are likely tied to seeds planted back at
the New Moon in early February of this year. The Full Moon conjoins Neptune in Pisces and sits in opposition,
naturally, to the Sun and a rather interesting group of astrological entities:
Ceres and Transpluto (aka Persephone) along with Mercury (Hermes).

Now since this is a
radical, eccentric, and pretty much off the wall lunation, I’m going to take a
moment to discuss Transpluto and its significance, since it’s only 2 degrees
from a conjunction with the Sun, and since the Sun sits on the Ceres/Transpluto
midpoint. Transpluto is considered a “hypothetical” planet. That means that as
a physical planetary body, it can’t be tested since it has yet to be physically
sited. I would argue that for astrologers, it’s definitely more theoretical,
because they can test it, and they do. Needless to say, the use of Transpluto in astrology is rather controversial ground, especially from the perspective of traditional astrologers.

There are several books about Transpluto and a large body of
research conducted on this hypothetical object to convince me of not only its
significance, but also its likely existence as a real tangible entity within
our solar system. Transpluto appears to be a dynamic and impactful archetypal force within
the ranks of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. My sense of Transpluto is that,
because it is still unconscious and very much dormant within the collective
psyche (like a lot of other stuff), we do not have the tools to deal with it on
an individual level.

I find that it often overwhelms us completely, and as a
result we end up short circuiting the energy and misinterpreting its underlying
intentions (which is common with all Trans-Saturnian planets, since they deal
with energies beyond our physical/tangible perception). But that doesn't mean
we can’t use it constructively (there are many who do), but that most of us
cannot fully grasp the complexity of the process it deals with, since it’s a
part of an emerging paradigm we, as a society, are not yet (obviously) ready
for.

Transpluto is the result of mathematical reasoning and
speculation. After the discoveries of Uranus and Neptune, astronomers noticed
that there were anomalies, or perturbations, in the two planets predicted
paths—meaning they weren't behaving like they should, which could only result
from the gravitational tug from another nearby object. In fact, Neptune’s
discovery was catalyzed by these same observations in Uranus’ unusual orbit.
Pluto’s discovery proved anticlimactic because initially it was believed to be
the reason for the anomalies; shortly after however it was realized that Pluto
failed to account for the perturbations.

And so, even with the discovery of a
slew of other objects beyond Neptune, the mysterious Transpluto has yet to be
seen, and must theoretically exist since nothing has as of yet explained away
the anomalies. The first ephemeris (based on its mathematically predicted position)
was published in 1972 by Theodor Landscheidt and Reinhold Ebertain (yes, collaboration
between an astronomer and astrologer). Other ephemerides with differing
calculations have emerged, but their variations are all but slight. Therefore,
Transpluto has been studied by modern astrologers ever since, and has proved
itself a reliable and testable object.

The name Persephone was initially proposed by astronomer H.H
Kritzinger; he reasoned that because the object was just beyond Pluto (god of
the underworld) that Transpluto must be its consort (Persephone as Queen of the
Underworld). There is an asteroid by the (official) name of Persephone, and
many argue that Transpluto cannot be named Persephone as well. With official naming aside, I will say that
from my experience Transpluto carries with it many elements pertinent to the
Persephone mythos. A very convincing and extremely well researched book on this
subject is Persephone Is Transpluto: The
Scientific, Mythological & Astrological Discovery of the Planet Beyond
Pluto by astrologer and astronomer Valerie Vaughn. I highly recommend it
for astrologers, astronomers, or those just interested in the subject.

Since both Transpluto (Persephone) and Ceres sit in opposition to this pressurized Aquarian lunation, I will suggest that the myth of Ceres and Persephone is playing a prominent role at this time, and will likely have an association with whatever emerges from it. Ceres (or Demeter) is Persephone’s mother. Depending on
which version of the narrative you read, Persephone is either abducted against
her will, or she willingly chooses to go to the underworld. In the much later
patriarchal version (which I feel is more relevant to our current collective
awareness), Pluto, god of the underworld, abducts Persephone and takes her away
from Ceres and Mt. Olympus after tempting her with a narcissus flower.

Persephone
becomes Pluto’s wife; accruing the title of Queen of the underworld, and
together they rule and govern the dead. Neither Ceres nor Persephone is happy
about the situation. Ceres searches everywhere for her beloved daughter, for
nine days, but obviously fails to find her. She ends up conversing with the Sun
who tells her the whole story. Ceres, as the goddess of fertility and harvest,
causes the earth to dry up; it becomes lifeless as a result of her
grief, creating an environmental crisis of sorts.

Ceres leaves Olympus and goes to live (and wander) the
barren and ice covered earth, disguising herself as an old (mortal) woman.
Ending up in Eleusis (in some versions) Ceres sits by a well and meets four
young sisters who ask what she’s doing there. She makes up a story (obviously,
because she couldn't possibly tell the truth, revealing her divinity). The
girls invite Ceres to come stay with them and their family.

Ceres agrees, and ends
up becoming a sort of midwife, nursing their mother’s newborn son (perhaps an
attempt to compensate for her personal loss). Eventually, Ceres reveals her
true identity, and demands that they build her a temple. There Ceres sits,
still heartbroken and sorrowful due to the loss of her daughter. The world
becomes ever more barren, lifeless, and cold, an epidemic of famine takes hold
of the immortal earthlings.

Zeus decides that something must be done, and so he sends
Hermes (being a sly and silver tongued trickster) to the underworld to retrieve
Persephone. Pluto realizes he cannot refuse the order of Zeus, and so agrees to
let her go. Before leaving however, Pluto convinces Persephone to eat a
pomegranate seed (or seeds, depending on which version; sometimes she eats
three). As a result of this, Persephone must return to the Underworld during
one third of the year (three months of winter). And so, the story correlates to
the origin of the seasons.

When Persephone must return, Ceres grieves and the
earth becomes barren and cold creating the winter season. When Persephone
returns, life once again emerges and spring is born. The story is very much
about the process of death and rebirth, the impermanence of beauty, life, and
innocence. It describes a process of initiation, which changes Persephone
forever; she’s never quite the same again. Persephone is taken (abducted) from
an idyllic field of flowers on the ascended Mt. Olympus. She’s dragged against
her will, kicking and screaming into the underworld.

Upon her return, she is permanently stained by her
experience. She brings the underworld back with her. Such is the experience of Transpluto; it permanently alters our reality and leaves an everlasting imprint upon the
individual. It offers us a powerful initiatory process in which we must cross
an evolutionary threshold, leaving old ways behind us. Often that takes us into
an alternate dimension, or we become a part of two separate and seemingly
conflicting realms. It is a planet of paradox, but ultimately, it is a
construct of reconciliation.

Certainly not a reality we humans have yet to
fully experience or comprehend—but, once or
if it is discovered, we are likely to get catapulted into an entirely
foreign and unimaginable paradigm. I have found Persephone/Transpluto to have an antithetical resonance to that of Pluto. While Pluto deals with death, decay, and entropy--Persephone embodies growth, empowerment, and ectropy; she seeks to pull us up and out of the mud, so to speak. Although, that process involves extremely harsh demands placed upon an individual, in which they must learn to rely entirely on themselves.

Another researcher who has done a lot of work on Transpluto
is astrologer Lynn Koiner[1]. In her article,
Transpluto Is Real! she reveals the results of her research and its effects
within the individual natal horoscope. Lynn found a distinct personality type
that emerged when Transpluto was conjunct significant natal placements, such as
the Sun, Moon, and the angles of the chart. She found very strong perfectionist
qualities associated with Transpluto, much like the zodiac sign of Virgo.

In
many of the situations, the individual with strong configurations often had a
highly demanding and critical parent. Lynn provides keywords associated with
the Transpluto personality type: The Perfectionsit/Perfectionism,
Self-Sufficiency, The Reformer Complex, and Alienation. One key element of
Transpluto was that it was associated with extreme self-sufficiency, which was
a psychological backlash to protect one from criticism and fault finding.

From my own observations over the years I've found Lynn’s
discoveries to be incredibly accurate and consistent whenever Transpluto is poignantly
placed in the chart. It’s significant in the charts of highly “successful” (by
the standards of our society) and infamous individuals who seem to “go their
own way” and really push the limits of their talents and abilities, and as a
result become extremely self-sufficient in the process. It also carries the theme of apotheosis, giving an individual a certain, "god like status". However, that’s not
always the case.

It’s also prominent in the horoscopes of lottery winners.
Lynn mentions that in all the cases she studied, Transpluto was making a
conjunction or square to the ruler of the second house cusp, a planet in the
second house, or Venus. In Astrology’s
Special Measurements, in which Lynn’s article was originally published, Noel
Tyl mentions a case in his article titled The
Measure of the Astrologer, where a client of his “received a great deal of
money unexpectedly”[2], while transiting Transpluto was opposing his client’s natal
Venus.

Of further interest is the work of Astrologer Joyce Wehrman[3]. Joyce spent a great
deal of her life studying the astrology of luck and gambling. She came up with
a system she claimed could determine, at any specific moment, when an
individual was either “on the wheel”, as she called it, or “off the wheel”. In
other words, through her method you can determine when someone is either lucky
or unlucky at any given time or place.

Joyce’s system is highly specific and incredibly complex. It
requires a great deal of work because the horoscope needs to be extremely
exact, down to the second. That means that you must test the chart over and
over, to not only rectify the horoscope to its accurate time, but to also
determine which specific planets or transiting house cusps trigger, for the
individual, the most fortunate times. Joyce suggested starting out with penny
blackjack, otherwise, that could be an expensive process.

Anyway, my point is
that Joyce equally found that Transpluto was involved in the process of
determining lucky wins or losses. So much so that she included it in her system, which
as I stated, only works if the chart is incredibly
precise. This eventually became a computer program developed by Matrix
Software, which definitely makes it much easier to utilize. In my opinion,
Transpluto is real! There’s something there, and that something is a force to
be reckoned with. Because of its influence on these latter cases I've just
described, I was led to discover that Transpluto has a distinct influence on money
and economics.

The word economics is Greek for the management of the home,
ecos (home) and nomia (management). In the myth of Ceres and Persephone, the earth
(our home), becomes barren, cold, and desolate--leading to a global
environmental and economic crisis for all (us) mortals. Economics isn't just
about money, it’s about natural resources which we exchange with symbolic
currency; it’s about how we sustain ourselves, and that often involves food and
nourishment (themes related specifically to Ceres).

Again, this Full Moon sits
in direct opposition to both Ceres and Transpluto (Persephone). It also happens
to conjoin the natal (or radix) Moon in the U.S. Sibly horoscope--a highly
sensitive point which was activated by none other than Transpluto itself (along
with other transits and secondary progressions) during key events which lead to
the Great Depression and the recent Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2012, which
I would say is definitely not over, unfortunately.

This Full Moon isn't an eclipse, but it is, in my opinion, a
very significant lunation that could carry a symbolic impact. It sheds a bright
light on our national (and global) food supply, new and emerging technological
advancements, economic issues, and the general well-being of planet earth. I
believe that currently, Persephone is trapped in the underworld and that Ceres
mourns the loss of her beloved daughter. Our world has become neglected and is
dying. This compelling astrological object is slowly but surely becoming
conscious within each of us, it is vying for our attention.

Persephone will one
day return to the earth and spring will once again flourish and embrace the
earth with new life. Its probable discovery will not signal a “solution” or “cure” to our global
(economic, financial, or environmental) crisis, but rather the opening of new
realms and realities which completely alter the perspective and understanding
of the very root of such problems. With this lunation we have the opportunity to embrace the
contradictions we’re currently dealing with, and to accept them for what they
are.

What that means is that the world is changing. There’s no going back to
the way it was. The good old days will never return, even the perfect agrarian
ideal of endless green pastures and bright sunny days. No, we have crossed a
significant threshold; we aren't in Kansas anymore. So what do we do? Well we
can’t hang on to the past (Norman Rockwell and Apple Pie Americana), and we
can’t just give up and let the world become a barren and lifeless landscape
(adopting a sort of hopeless or nihilistic attitude).

The myth of Ceres and
Persephone points us dynamically to the concept of compromise, of both/and, not either/or. We must embrace the inherent polarities and
contradictions, surrender to the chaos, and love it for what it is.
Everything dies, all will come to an end. But the end is just another step
within the process. Finality is merely our perception and assumption. So where
is it all going? I can’t claim that I know, but we’re all going with it. You
can either go willingly or….kicking and screaming, take your pick.

Transpluto/Persephone is slowly moving into the sign of Virgo, and will officially leave Leo in July of 2014. Persephone has been transiting Leo since 1938. I believe this transit correlates our current economic, industrial, and cultural emphasis on all Leonian themes: amusement/entertainment, ego glorification, self-indulgence, pleasure orientation, glamour, celebrity idols, etc., etc. It's transit through Virgo is likely to pop our collective ego bubble, and quite literally rain on the parade. Leo is all about the power of personality and the individual. Virgo is about how the individual fits into the larger scheme of society, and how it can serve the greater good.

That's quite an inversion, and a definite cultural shift. Virgo's emphasis is on improving health, the environment, and serving a larger collective purpose. What the economic ramifications will be--let your imagination run wild. Persephone, again, correlates to the theme of apotheosis, and creates a collective worship of the symbols inherent to the sign it is in. Ego/Self worship is meeting its end, the party is over. Economic structures related to the qualities of Virgo will gradually build and replace those outmoded Leonian industries as the curtain comes down.

Now, from that digression, let us look at other aspects of
the Full Moon. As I stated at the beginning of this article, it correlates to a
powerful flowering, culmination, and an explosive archetypal influx. Anaretic
degrees signify a critical shifting of energy, a build-up, and can equally
correlate to instability within a structure. In the Full Moon horoscope Jupiter
is within minutes of an exact Square with Uranus, and just leaving its first
Opposition to Pluto. The Jupiter and Uranus square is exact about 5 and ½ hours
after the Full Moon.

This is some intense and critical energy, which has been
active ever since Jupiter entered Cancer at the end of June. Jupiter expands
and amplifies this highly individualistic, rebellious, and cutting edge Uranus
in Aries—and both Squares (Jupiter Square Uranus and Uranus Square Pluto) are
waxing squares. That means there’s a lot of cutting away and consolidating that
needs to be done. Jupiter in Cancer relates to our home, our sense of security,
nourishment, and foundation. Uranus in Aries relates to our need to be free to
express ourselves authentically and to forge new frontiers.

This Full Moon, again, brings up the issue of reconciliation
and compromise. How can we allow change to progress and take shape without
losing our place in the world completely, without uprooting everything? How do
we integrate these two needs so that they both have free expression? How do we acknowledge
the need for those things that provide safety and comfort without clinging to
the past and stifling forward progress? The only way is through trying it out,
working out the kinks, and by allowing ourselves to make mistakes.

The tension
suggested by these aspects requires that we tough it out. Through the friction
and tension a new form emerges. Jupiter makes a Trine to the North Node in
Scorpio, and a Trine to Chiron in Pisces. Jupiter Trine the North Node is an
incredibly supportive influence, it reveals that as long we are real, open, and
vulnerable--we are likely to find plenty of help and support as we face very
deep, dark, and rough terrain. It also allows us to free ourselves of
stagnation, pushing us through the clutter and obstacles to get to the bottom
line essentials. Perhaps this Full Moon sheds light on paths that lead us
effortlessly toward an essential cleansing and decluttering process, and allows us to merge easily with others going in the same direction.

On a personal and collective level, we must be open to
support and feedback, especially when it’s literally being handed to us on a
shiny silver platter. Jupiter’s first Trine to Chiron ignites a powerful
healing opportunity that will last until next summer. It allows us to heal and
integrate the root of certain wounds, and to guide us toward higher perceptions
which reveal the truth of those wounds. This is a time of incredible insight
that opens up a clear and numinous perception.

From now until next May, Jupiter
Trine Chiron can assist in deep emotional processing, physical healing,
integration, and the gifting of powerful intuitive insights and understanding
gleamed from higher densities. Amidst the conflict and potential instability of
the T-square with Pluto, Uranus, and Jupiter—the Chiron/Jupiter Trine asks that
we remain open and vulnerable, and that we surrender to our own healing
process. This is tricky because many other elements are encouraging us to fight
and attack things head on (Mars conjunct Lilith and Jupiter square Uranus).

Perhaps, along with this lunation, comes a moment of
acceptance, trust, and surrender, since the Full Moon conjoins Neptune in Pisces, creating an awareness of higher omnipotent forces. Aquarius is a powerful conduit of
objectivity. Perhaps we get a glimpse, if only momentarily, of why things are
the way they are, or why it all unfolds the way it does. If we surrender our judgments
and preconceived notions; if we let go of all fear, paranoia, worry, and
anxiety, for just a moment, we may just see that at the root of everything there
is a divine and benevolent force guiding us toward a truly higher purpose.

Sometimes, that higher purpose takes us into lurid and disturbing landscapes,
such as deep into the underworld. But at the root of it, we’re all going the
same direction, despite the perceived detours. While it may not seem apparent
from our limited third density perception, we are oneness striving to know and
love itself. Remember that, and see that truth reflected in all eyes your gaze
encounters.

About The Blogger

Chad Woodward is a writer, astrologer, and bodyworker/holistic healer currently living in southern California. He has been writing astrological articles on his blog, Kosmic Mind, since 2009. Chad has also written for Planet Waves.net and Astrology.Answers.com. He is a Steven Forrest trained astrologer working within the paradigm of evolutionary astrology.